


Put Out Every Star

by Gruoch



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst and Tragedy, F/M, Forgiveness, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Meditations on grief, Rebuilding, So much guilt, Survivor Guilt, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-04
Updated: 2018-09-10
Packaged: 2019-07-06 21:25:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15894435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gruoch/pseuds/Gruoch
Summary: Later, much later, after the initial shock wears off and he can feel something other than numbness, he will attempt to contextualize this tragedy. He will compare it to all the other losses and failures he has experienced in his life, as if grief is something that can be quantified and measured against a standard. He will search for some formula that will explain why this loss feels so profoundly unbearable, why it feels like he’s had some vital organ he hadn’t previously even been aware of amputated. It will take him even longer to realize what an absurd, pointless exercise this is. That the only thing he can know with absolute certainty is that the Tony Stark who arrived at Titan is not the same man who left it.But for now all he can think about is escaping this dusty tomb of a planet as quickly as possible._________________After Titan, a homecoming.





	1. Chapter One

**I. Ozymandias**

 

“I can take you home,” the blue woman says.

He looks at the ash on his hands and thinks of a thousand broken promises. “Why?” 

“You were spared.”

“For what?” 

Half the universe gone. He closes his hands into fists to still their trembling.

“I don’t know. I don’t care,” the woman says in her flat, mechanical voice. Her dark eyes rove over the patch of dusty red earth where Quill and his companions once stood, whole and alive. Her eyelids flicker almost imperceptibly. “But no more deaths. Get up.”

Later, much later, after the initial shock wears off and he can feel something other than numbness, he will attempt to contextualize this tragedy. He will compare it to all the other losses and failures he has experienced in his life, as if grief is something that can be quantified and measured against a standard. He will search for some formula that will explain why this loss feels so profoundly unbearable, why it feels like he’s had some vital organ he hadn’t previously even been aware of amputated. It will take him even longer to realize what an absurd, pointless exercise this is. That the only thing he can know with absolute certainty is that the Tony Stark who arrived at Titan is not the same man who left it.

But for now all he can think about is escaping this dusty tomb of a planet as quickly as possible.

He stands, choking on the pain that throbs in his gut, hunched over like the old, broken man he is. He runs his tongue over his teeth, tasting the metallic grit of blood mixed with ash, and limps towards the woman.

*  
*  
*  
*  
*

“Drink this,” the blue woman tells him while the ship hums and creaks and squeals like a living thing around them. They had found the spacecraft Quill and the others had flown to Titan badly battered by pieces of fallen moon but stable enough to fly with care. In another time, in other circumstances, Tony would have been thrilled to examine every inch of the ship until he discovered all of its secrets and knew it well enough that he could not only recreate it but improve upon it. But now he just feels empty and exhausted, the sharp throb of the stab wound making his breath come short and stilted. A gray mist hovers at the edges of his vision and his hearing fades in and out. He wonders dispassionately if this is what dying feels like.

The woman is holding out a small bottle to him. He takes it and briefly examines its contents. The liquid inside is clear and smells sweet. He downs it in a single gulp without asking what it is, doesn’t care if it’s medicine or poison or just some alien equivalent of Gatorade. It burns fiercely on the way down.

Whatever it was in the bottle, the effect it has on him is almost immediate. A heaviness settles over his limbs and his fingers and face tingle with pins and needles. The lights within the spacecraft smear and dazzle as they slide in and out of focus. The drone of the ship’s engine is a vibration he can feel in his chest. His mind drifts as the stars streak silently by until he slips into dreamless sleep.

When he wakes an indeterminate amount of time later, he finds that the woman has bandaged his wound with a some kind of biological fabric and washed the blood and ash from his hands and face. He stares at his clean, quivering hands for a long, long time, listening to a strange, keening whine that he thinks at first is coming from somewhere in the ship before realizing he is the one making it. Then he vomits his guts up until he feels his side rip open again with a hot scarlet gush of blood and pain. 

He screams like a dying animal until the woman comes again and effortlessly pins his feverish, thrashing body down. 

“Don’t. Just—just leave me alone,” he begs through gritted teeth. The pain is everywhere, like every nerve is raw and exposed. _Let me die. Let me die. Let me die._

“Shut up,” she replies, forcing more scalding liquid down his throat until he falls senseless again.

*  
*  
*  
*  
*

Pepper is sitting across the table from him in the new penthouse they’ve bought together in Manhattan, drinking coffee. 

(“So you’ll be close to work,” Tony had said when he suggested the purchase, “and to actual good restaurants and shows and anything that makes life worth living”— and because he can’t stand the emptiness of the compound upstate and the feeling that it evokes, something a little too close to regret. He sees this property as something symbolic—a fresh start, a brighter future with Pepper. The new penthouse is bigger than the one in the Tower, too, because Tony has…an as yet unspoken notion in the back of his mind that one day they might need the extra space. Maybe. Just in case. He has always liked to be prepared.)

The warm morning sun filters through the window behind her, and she looks like she is glowing. _Angelic_ , he thinks, as cheesy as that sounds. Sometimes in spite of everything that’s happened between them, or perhaps because of it, he is stunned by her presence in his life, like she is some kind of personal miracle bestowed upon him by the patron saint of irresponsible, neurotic assholes. 

“You’re goddamn gorgeous, you know that?” Tony says, and she rolls her eyes at him over the rim of her coffee cup, but he can see the smile that tugs at the corners of her lips.

“It’s true,” he tells her, reaching across for her free hand. He presses his lips to the back of her fingers. The light reflects off the stone in her engagement ring, splinters and winks like a distant star. 

( _Not so distant now_ , some corner of his mind whispers, and he shudders.)

“It’s gonna be different this time,” he says, like she hasn’t heard him say that a hundred times before. But maybe if he keeps saying it, he can will it into existence. He can be there for her the same way she’s always been there for him. 

“Tony,” she says, a little too knowing, a little too pained. “You shouldn't make promises you can’t keep.” She smiles at him again, soft and exasperated and full of love. “I’ve…accepted certain aspects of our relationship, as much as it pains me. I wouldn’t have said yes, otherwise.”

“I’m serious,” he insists, but he can’t blame her for not believing him. He doesn’t need her to believe it yet, because he’s going to prove it to her. He owes her that much. He may have the weight of the whole world on his shoulders, but she’s the one holding him up. 

Pepper sighs and sips her coffee, and Tony sips his beer—cool and crisp in the muggy August heat that wafts through the open windows into the cramped apartment along with all the cacophonous sounds of Queens. A birthday cake sits on the coffee table, the icing melting in the heat. A candle shaped like the number six slowly slides down the side of the cake before dropping suddenly to the plate below like a calving glacier.

Tony leans sideways towards Peter, who’s draped over the arm of the sofa like he’s also melting, hair curling in the humidity, and offers his bottle to the kid.

“Don’t corrupt my baby,” May jokingly warns, pressing her own bottle against the back of her neck and lazily fanning herself with a magazine. Tony waves her off.

“It’s a rite of passage, taking a swig of your old man’s beer and having your first taste of booze,” he says. “I’m just trying to help out a little here.”

His own father had offered him brandy. He had been younger than Peter and it had been far more than just a taste. He doesn’t dwell on that memory, though, because he notices that something in May’s expression softens, and for the first time ever he dares to think that maybe she could see him as a good thing in her kid’s life. He even dares to believe it himself, a terrifying and wondrous belief, as fragile as an eggshell.

_I want you to be better than me, but I can be better for you, too._

(“You shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep.”)

“He won’t like the way it tastes, anyway,” Tony adds, and laughs when Peter takes a cautious sip, his nose scrunching in predictable disgust while outside the windows the stars streak and stream and pinwheel across the vast black velvet of the sky. 

Tony thinks he’s had too much to drink then because his stomach churns and his mouth tastes sour and Steve is standing over him looking at him with an expression somewhere between disappointment and vexed affection.

“You’re just jealous because you can’t get drunk,” Tony wants to tell him, but his mouth feels full of cotton and his tongue won’t cooperate. Steve says nothing, just silently towers over him, all the words they need to speak to each other still too painful to say aloud. Maybe they’ll never get the chance to say anything at all now.

He drifts and dreams of crying children on dead planets and unspoken regrets and trillions of futures blown out in an instant like birthday candles. He feels the weight of failure bearing down on his very soul.

_I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry._

He wakes on a ship hurtling through nothingness.

*  
*  
*  
*  
*

“Do you have people waiting for you on Terra?” Nebula asks. They’ve been traveling for—hours? Days? Weeks? Tony isn’t sure anymore. In the endless dark of space, with no distinguishable line between day and night, his sense of time is warped. He mostly keeps to Quill’s old quarters, lying in a drug-induced sleep state, coming out from time to time to eat food that tastes like ash and make stilted, mostly one-sided conversation with his alien companion. If she finds his presence a deadweight, he’s never heard her complain. She barely speaks to him at all, so the question surprises him.

“Maybe,” Tony says. There’s a part of him that is tempted not to return. If he never goes home he never has to find out. Never has to know whether Pepper is alive or a pile of ash, whether he’s truly lost everything that makes his life worth living.

“What about you?” he asks hollowly, because it feels like the thing he’s supposed to say now, and because he hates the long silences that stretch between them. The silence seems to exaggerate the sense of claustrophobia he feels inside the ship. He didn’t think it was possible to feel that way while surrounded by the incomprehensible vastness of space, but he does. “Is there…someone else out there?”

“I don’t know either,” Nebula states, a slight downward turn of her mouth the only indication that this uncertainty troubles her. 

She was left alone on Titan, too, he sometimes has to remind himself. Just the two of them, strangers to each other, the lone survivors. The cyborg and the mechanic. If Tony could find it in himself to care, he would wonder at how strangely fitting a pair they made. 

“I’m sorry,” Tony says, uselessly, which seems to be his constant state these days.

Nebula’s dead doll eyes harden. “I am used to being alone.”

“What will you do?” Tony asks. “After.” _After you take me home._ He thinks again about what could await him there and his breath catches in his throat.

There is a faint mechanical whirring noise when Nebula tightens her jaw. “This is not over so long as my father still lives. I will find him and kill him for what he has done. I will avenge them.”

“That’s what we did,” Tony says, half to himself. He can feel Nebula looking at him. “We called ourselves Avengers.” He gives a little, humorless laugh. “What a crock of shit. We couldn’t even hold the team together. What good is any of it?”

“You would let Thanos live after this atrocity he has committed?” 

She sounds disgusted, and Tony can’t blame her, but something hot and angry throbs in his chest.

“I’m saying _what’s the fucking point_?” he snaps. “Even if by some miracle you manage to kill him—so what? Justice served, everyone gets a hug and a kiss, we all meet up for shawarma? It changes nothing. Your sister doesn’t come back. Quill and the others don’t come back. The kid—”

He stops, choking on the sudden tightness in his throat. He can feel the walls of the ship pressing inward on him but in his mind he is back on Titan, cupping ashes in his palms and tasting blood in his mouth. He swallows hard to keep from gagging.

“Do you even know where Thanos could be?” he asks, when he’s recovered enough to speak again. He’s not even sure why he’s bothering, except to keep her talking. To keep hearing her voice and distract himself from the hollow feeling that grows like a cancer in his chest.

“No,” Nebula says. “But once word spreads that he is responsible for what has happened, there will be many just like us. People seeking vengeance. He will be hunted in every corner of the universe. He cannot hide forever.”

Tony can't help but scoff. “The universe is a pretty big place.”

“Not as big as you think,” Nebula says coldly. She flexes her robotic fingers, like she’s imagining wrapping them around her father’s thick neck. The mechanical joints pop and bubble, lubricant leaking out from the seams like blood.

*  
*  
*  
*  
*

He sleeps and wakes and forces down tasteless food over conversations with Nebula that have slowly shifted into something, if not friendly, then at least comfortable. He looks through the portholes out into a starry expanse that looks exactly the same every time he peers out. Sometimes he thinks maybe they aren’t actually moving but are trapped in some weird stasis, or maybe that Thanos destroyed everything and he and Nebula are the only ones left alive in the entire universe, hurtling through dead, empty space. Then he’ll dose himself with that same sweet-smelling, clear liquid Nebula had made him drink before the creeping anxiety overwhelms him, and he sleeps and wakes and sleeps again. He catches Nebula watching him sometimes and he think she might be worried but it’s hard to say with her. But then sleep comes quickly and he finds he doesn’t care. 

He drifts and dreams and—

Peter stands in the doorway of Tony’s quarters, wearing an oversized sweater and worn sneakers. He hikes his backpack up on his shoulders.

“Where are you going, kid?” Tony asks, and Peter turns and smiles at him, that little close-lipped, self-conscious smile he does that is so familiar.

“You know where,” Peter says, rolling his eyes and laughing like he thinks Tony’s just giving him a hard time.

“I don’t know,” Tony insists, feeling himself starting to panic. “I don’t know where you’re going. Pete, _please_. Tell me.”

But the kid is still smiling, like he doesn’t know how scared Tony really is. “Mr. Stark, you’re being really weird.”

_Tell me,_ Tony wants to demand but his mouth is full of cotton again and he can’t get the words out. _I promised to keep you safe. If I don’t know where you are, I can’t keep you safe._ But that’s a lie because he had held Peter in his arms, held him right against his chest where his heart had been hammering, and the kid had still died. 

“Stay,” Tony manages to whisper.

But Peter is already gone.

*  
*  
*  
*  
*

“I’m starting to think this ship is a piece of junk,” Tony says, replacing the cover over one of the control panels and using the heel of his hand to jam it tight. He’s lost count of how many feet of wiring he’s replaced all over the ship but he thinks it must be miles by this point.

“Your assessment is correct,” Nebula replies. She’s reentering data into the navigation system, a scowl on her face.

“Is that why this trip is taking so fucking long?” Tony asks, looking over her shoulder and tapping his foot irritably. 

It feels like an age has passed since they left Titan. At some point Nebula had thrown away the last of the bottles of medicine Tony had been drugging himself with and thrust tools into his hands instead, pointing out broken down things that needed mending. There seems to be an endless supply and yet never enough to sate him. Now that he has been forced out of his self-induced anesthetized state, he has been filled with a restless, anxious energy that worsens the further they travel from Titan. If his hands are busy, his mind is even busier, his thoughts ricocheting between dreading what awaits him on Earth and replaying the fight on Titan in his mind’s eye, analyzing every move they made, searching for the errors and alternatives. The only constant in both scenarios is the gut-clenching terror and guilt.

“Partially,” Nebula replies. “I am reluctant to attempt too many jumps with the amount of structural damage still present. But there are also…complications involving refueling stations. Our journey has been delayed as a result.”

“Complications?”

Nebula glances up at him. “Many stations have been abandoned. And there are other places where I would be recognized as Thanos’ daughter. If you wish to return home alive then I do not suggest we berth there. Especially not now.”

“So you have something of a unpleasant reputation, huh?” Tony says wryly. “Who would have guessed?”

“I have the reputation of a murderer.” Nebula’s mouth twists. “It is a reputation I deserve.”

“Ah, self-loathing,” Tony says, leaning back in his chair and putting his feet up on the glowing console in front of him. He rubs at his side where his injury is still healing. It itches and aches fiercely, but it no longer seems like it will kill him. He’s not sure how he feels about that. “Finally, something we can bond over.”

He’s rewarded with the tiniest upward twitch of Nebula’s lips. She reminds him a little of Natasha. It had been a little game to him, getting Nat to smile—not the trained smile of the spy, but a real, candid smile. A rare and precious thing. _Are you alive, Nat?_ he wonders, pressing a hand to his chest where a now familiar ache resides behind his sternum. 

Nebula reaches towards another monitor and her robotic arm seizes up as it is wont to do from time to time. She mutters a curse and uses her other hand to manually disengage the mechanical limb. It makes an awful metal on metal sound as she does so, and she grimaces in pain.

“I could fix that, too, you know,” Tony says, gesturing to her arm. He thinks it’s a harmless offer, but the deadly look Nebula fixes him with has him shrinking back from her. An apology is at his lips when her expression changes just slightly, the hard edges smoothing out.

“That armored suit—you made it?” she asks.

“Yeah. Yes,” Tony says. “I was—I am a mechanic, on Earth.”

“It is impressive considering your primitive technology. And you have done well maintaining the ship’s technical components,” she says, almost reluctantly. “I will allow you to modify my mechanical parts.”

She extends her arm towards him, her posture rigid despite her acquiescence. 

He gently takes her robotic limb in his hands and turns it over as he examines it. He lets out a low whistle. “Lordy, this is a mess. No wonder you’re such a murderous asshole. Who maintains this?”

“I do,” Nebula says frostily. “The raccoon has offered, but I do not trust him not to steal anything.”

Tony pauses, looking at her from under raised brows. “I’m sorry, did you say _raccoon?_ ”

The question seems to shake something loose in her, or perhaps she is trying to distract herself from the discomfort as he opens panels on her arm to get at the circuitry within. But she starts to tell him about the other Guardians Tony hasn’t met, and stories about the ones he has. 

He listens and lets himself sink into the task before him. It’s different from repairing the ship—something more intimate and personal, something beyond merely meeting the functional requirements necessary to survive. It requires more of his attention, more care and gentleness to reduce the amount of discomfort he causes her. He finds it harder to dwell on his own pain when he’s focusing on hers.

“My sister loved the Terran,” she says quietly, after a time. “I thought she was stupid for it. Quill is…he was foolish and irrational and he talked too much. But she loved him anyway. She…she loved me, as well, and she died for it. She was an idiot. They were all idiots. It is a weakness to care so deeply for anyone.” Her expression hardens for a moment before softening again, a muscle jumping in her jaw as she struggles to maintain her composure. “Still I…mourn for them.”

Tony’s hands still on her arm as she talks, half afraid to breath in case it jars her back into her chilly silence. “I’m sorry,” he offers again, and it still sounds inadequate to him.

But she nods once, stiffly. “I am sorry, as well. For your friend and for the boy.” She looks at him with her black eyes. “He was your son?” 

“No,” Tony shakes his head, swallowing convulsively. “No, he was just...”

_A future. A promise. A dream._

He shakes his head again, biting the inside of his cheek hard and pressing his hands against his eyes until the ache in his chest subsides and he is able to breathe again without feeling like he is going to fall into pieces.

Nebula watches silently, her expression unreadable. Then she nods once more, like they’ve reached an understanding. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He’ll come back from Siberia bruised in body and soul. He’ll think, _this is what being shattered *really* feels like._ And then he will pick up the pieces and rebuild. The pain does not go away, the doubt and the regret will linger, but in the wake of this new loss he will start to think more seriously about legacy. He will start to dream about making a family of his own. He has tried hard to be a better man, to be the hero the world demands. But he thinks, now, he could be more. A better friend. A better husband. A better father.

**II. A Better Man**

 

When he is seventeen, he will drive down the same road his parents were traveling when they died. He will drive too fast and too recklessly because he is a child and doesn’t know what to do with the hurt and anger screaming in his chest. He will drive that road over and over again until he could do it with his eyes closed. He might actually drive it with his eyes closed, sometimes.

After Afghanistan it will take him months to learn how to put his face under water without panicking. He will learn to harness his suffering. He will look at the ugly inhuman horror glowing in his chest and he will use it to become a better man, to protect people instead of hurting them, because he is so certain everything that happened to him happened for a reason and he won’t waste this second chance.

He’ll come back from Siberia bruised in body and soul. He’ll think, _this is what being shattered *really* feels like._ And then he will pick up the pieces and rebuild. The pain does not go away, the doubt and the regret will linger, but in the wake of this new loss he will start to think more seriously about legacy. He will start to dream about making a family of his own. He has tried hard to be a better man, to be the hero the world demands. But he thinks, now, he could be more. A better friend. A better husband. A better father.

Then he will watch it all die on Titan. He will escape with nothing but the memory of blood and ash in his mouth and a scar along his side and a far deeper wound that will never, never, never heal.

*  
*  
*  
*  
*

It takes them eighty-three days to return to Earth, he’ll learn later. 

He attempts to make contact with someone, anyone, as they make their approach but the line they manage to connect is so spotty and weak he’s not even sure anyone has answered. He sends a message with his name and intentions to land on the grounds of the Avengers facility anyway, just in case a person is on the other end and can make out what he says. He half-expects to return home only to be blasted out of the sky by anti-aircraft missiles, but they are met with no resistance as they make their landing, something that is almost more disturbing and eerie than a relief.

Tony is nearly sick with anxiety as the _Benatar_ eases down onto the landing pad, the sound of his blood pounding in his ears muffling the noise of the engine and stabilizing thrusters. Nebula turns to him once they touch down, something inscrutable in her black eyes, and after a moment she wordlessly offers him her hand. He takes it gratefully, feeling her powerful metal fingers close around his weak flesh ones, gripping them tightly to still their incessant trembling.

The sunlight streaming in through the open hatch of the ship is dazzlingly bright. He stumbles blindly out into the open, his knees jarring as his feet strike the hard asphalt of the landing pad, dragged down by the stronger pull of gravity here on Earth. He stands and blinks dumbly for a long moment, clutching Nebula with one hand for support and hugging his free arm against his still aching side.

“Tony?” a familiar voice calls, incredulous. “Oh, my god—Tony! You’re alive! Oh, Tony, Tony, _Tony._ ”

Hands grip his shoulders, move up and down his arms as if to make sure he is really there. Tony blinks again until the white sear of the sun fades and Bruce appears in front of him, alive and whole, crying and babbling at him. “Jesus, Tony, when I got the message…I didn’t believe it, I didn’t believe it could be you, I thought you were gone for good when you took off on that ship, but I hoped, god, I hoped, and it’s you. It _is_ you. You’re alive, you’re back!”

“Bruce,” Tony croaks out, letting himself be tugged into a tight hug. “Brucey, please—are they—are they all—is Pepper…”

Bruce leans back, still gripping Tony’s shoulders. His face is thinner and his hair grayer than Tony remembers, a wild mess of curls, but he’s smiling through his tears. “She’s alive. She’s alive, man. She’s—she’s been holding it together, you know? She’s a real force of nature. She’s in D.C. trying to help sort this mess out, with Rhodey and Happy. They made it out, too. They made it. _You_ made it.

“It’s going to be okay now,” Bruce adds, with the slightly desperate edge of someone who is trying to convince themselves of the truth of their own words. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

Tony doesn’t care whether Bruce is right about that or not. _Pepper is alive. Rhodey is alive. Happy is alive._ Nothing else matters in that moment.

Tony’s legs give out then as the dread and horror he has been carrying for weeks is suddenly released. He feels dizzy from the euphoria it leaves behind and he sags against Bruce and the two of them sink to their knees onto the hot tarmac, clinging to each other, and Tony wants to weep from the relief of it all but he can’t remember how, so he laughs instead, half-hysterical, the noise choking in his throat and sounding to his ears almost like he’s sobbing.

*  
*  
*  
*  
*

He’s on his way to being reunited with Pepper and Rhodey an hour later, the longest, most unbearable hour of his life. All aircraft have been grounded since the _event_ , as the skeletal crew of staff at the compound refer to Thanos’ act of universal genocide, but Tony could not give a single fuck about that. He has escaped death and traveled across the universe to return to Pepper and there is nothing now that will stand in his way of getting to her. He’s on a private helicopter and in the air as soon as he can arrange the flight, brushing off Bruce’s request that he first get checked out by medical. He waits only long enough to see Nebula off after she refuses to stay at the compound, wishing instead to immediately seek out her own friends.

(“You were spared,” she had told him again as she prepared to leave. It may have just been his imagination, but he thought there was something like fondness in her voice. “Don’t make me regret expending energy on you.”)

On board the helicopter, Bruce sits across from him and nervously fills him in on everything that has happened while Tony was billions of miles away, runs through the grim tally of who’s alive and who’s dead—and Christ, that had been another blow, Wanda and Sam and Vision, all gone. But he can’t dwell on the grief, his mind singularly focused on getting to Rhodey and Pepper, on surviving each excruciating minute that they are still apart.

“Clint’s MIA. We think he’s alive but, um...There’s evidence that, uh, some of his family didn’t make it. Or none of them. We’re...we’re not quite sure.”

“Jesus,” Tony says, tasting bile at the back of his throat.

“Yeah, yeah, it’s...”

Bruce doesn’t finish his thought, grimacing as he stares out the window. _Nightmarish,_ Tony’s mind supplies. _Horrific. Monstrous. Unimaginably tragic._ He thinks of Clint’s children and that leads his mind back to Peter and the red earth of Titan and the slick feel of ash against his palms. Nausea roils in his guts and he presses the back of his hand against his mouth, feeling sweat bead along his hairline.

“Nat’s okay,” Bruce says after a minute, a small smile touching his lips. “I mean, of course she is, she’s the toughest one out of us. She was at HQ for awhile but I’m not sure where she is now. She…comes and goes.”

Tony lowers his hand. The relief he feels is real but he has to force himself to smile. “Sure, that’s Natasha alright. Keeps to her mysterious ways, even after the world ends.”

Bruce nods, looking down at his fidgeting hands in his lap. “Steve’s alive, too,” he says, carefully.

Tony feels slightly repulsed by the way a mention of the man can still hurt him, even after everything that’s happened. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. He’s in Wakanda still.” Bruce clears his throat. “He took it pretty hard, you know, when we thought…well, when we thought you weren’t coming back. We, um, we had a funeral there, for…for Wanda and Sam and Vision, once things had calmed down a little. We talked about, uh, having a, um, a funeral for you, too, or—or a memorial, or—“ He rubs a hand over his face. “Geez, it feels morbid talking about it now, with you right here. But Steve refused. Said we needed to give you more time. Looks like he was correct.”

“That sounds like him. Stubborn as fuck, always so sure he’s right,” Tony says, a tight smile twisting his mouth. “I shoulda died just to spite him.”

Bruce gives a strained laugh, and then clears his throat again, looking at Tony with somber eyes. “I think…I really think he hoped you’d come back so that you guys could, you know, patch things up. It killed him, you going missing like that with they way things were left between the two of you. I could tell it did, Tony. Especially after…after everyone we lost.” 

He reaches between them, squeezes Tony’s knee. “You should talk to him. Whatever happened between the two of you, whatever it was—don’t let it keep you apart. We’ve lost enough friends.”

Tony swallows against the bitter taste rising in the back of his throat and the tears that prick at his eyes. “I don’t even…I should have listened to you, Bruce, when you told me to make the call. I should have listened, before…God, I fucked up.”

Bruce rubs his knee. “Tony, don’t—it’s not too late.”

“No, no, you don’t get it,” Tony insists angrily. “I carried that goddamn flip phone around for nearly two years. I carried it everywhere, and when it really fucking mattered, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t make the call. Because I’m a coward.”

Bruce shakes his head, his eyes pleading. “Tony, no—"

“Yes. _Yes._ I’ve played through all the scenarios, Bruce. I sat in that-that fucking tin can jetting through space for weeks and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. If I had made that call, if I had turned the ship back around, if I hadn’t been such an arrogant, cowardly idiot…” Tony takes a gasping breath, pressing the heels of his hands against his eyelids. “If we’d been together, we could have _won_ this.”

“You don’t know that,” Bruce says. “You _can’t_ know that. Tony, I don’t know what happened out there, but this isn’t on you. We…we messed up here, too. He was too strong, we couldn’t have—"

“It doesn’t matter,” Tony interrupts, his voice dull. “It doesn’t fucking matter.” 

There is nothing that could exculpate him, no absolution awaiting. He could atone until the end of his days and it would still never be enough. Nothing could assuage this guilt. Nothing could fix this loss, this raw, gaping wound. The memories of the red dust and the ashes and the taste of blood that would haunt him forever.

_If you died, that’s on me._

*  
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*  
*

Rhodey is waiting for them when the chopper finally touches down in Washington.

“Lazarus,” he greets warmly, seizing Tony up in his arms. “I knew you were too much of a stubborn asshole to stay dead for long.”

“Fuck,” Tony says tearfully. “I missed you. God, I missed you so much.”

“You’re back now,” Rhodey says, squeezing him tighter. “We never would’ve been separated if you would stop being such a goddamn hero all the time.”

“I’m not,” Tony mumbles. “I’m not a hero.”

“Oh, don’t you start that shit the second you—"

“The kid’s dead,” Tony blurts out into Rhodey’s shoulder, because he has to tell someone before it tears him apart, someone who will understand even an ounce of his agony. “Peter’s dead.”

A beat of silence. Tony feels Rhodey sag for just a moment under the weight of this news. 

“Oh, Tones,” he sighs, his voice wavering. “Oh, Tony...I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry...I know how much he...oh, god, Tony, I’m sorry.”

Tony can only clutch tighter at Rhodey. “I left him there,” he chokes out. “God, I...I left him on Titan. He wasn’t supposed to be there, I swear, I tried—I should have...I left him. I left him. I had his ashes on my hands, I had them all over my hands, but—”

Rhodey shakes him a little, pleading. “Tony, Tony, don’t do this to yourself, man. Don’t do it.”

“It shouldn’t have been him,” Tony says, his voice breaking. “It shouldn’t...It shouldn’t have been him.”

Rhodey’s firm hand cups the back of Tony’s head. His voice is fierce. “Tony, I know what you’re thinking, but you listen to me right now—”

But Tony doesn’t hear the rest of what he has to say, because Pepper arrives. Tony spies her running towards him from over Rhodey’s shoulder. Her eyes are wide and shining and her cheeks flushed as she sprints across the ground, looking more beautiful than ever. Tony is running to meet her then, his body feeling strangely light and boneless, like he’s in a dream, and it feels like he’ll never reach her fast enough, like he’ll wake before he can get to her and find himself back on Titan waiting to perish alone on a dead planet.

But then she’s in his arms. Real. Solid. _Alive._ She’s crying, her tears soaking into his shirt, crying and kissing him with warm, salty lips. She’s still, inexplicably in his opinion, wearing the engagement ring he gave her. It flashes in the milky evening light, a memento of a past life, a life that has been put on hold for months, its future left fearfully ambiguous.

He doesn’t let go of her the rest of the night, not when she coaxes him to a room and gets him to eat a meal that he can’t even remember ten minutes after finishing, not when she helps undress him and get him into the first real shower he’s had in ages. Not after, when they lie in bed together and he presses his face against the side of her neck and her legs slide over his thighs and twine tight around his hips and the heat of her body melds against his.

“I love you,” he tells her desperately. “I love you, I love you, I love you. I’m so sorry, I made you a promise, and I’m so—“

“Don’t,” she says, kissing away the tension around his eyes and smoothing the lines in his brow with her soft, sure hands. She’s always been the strong one in their union. “You’re back. You came back. You’re here now. We’re together. That’s all that matters.”

“How do I...” He swallows down the knot of pain in his chest. “I don’t know what to do.”

“It’s alright.” She kisses him again, slow and full of heat. Full of life. 

“I’m here,” she says. “I’m here for you. I’ll always be here for you.”

And for the first time in months Tony feels like he is standing on firm ground again, even if the whole world around him is on fire. He can do this, he thinks, he can do this, he can keep going and breathing and _living_ if she is here beside him, holding him up, enduring when everything else crumbles to ruin.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Hey, Tony,” Steve says at last. Just like that, like the last time they saw each other they hadn’t been beating the shit out of each other, like Steve hadn’t left him bruised and bloodied and heartbroken in a bunker in Siberia. Like the world hadn’t ended and half the people they cared about hadn’t died.

**III. The Phantom Pain**

 

The grief never goes away but trying to piece back together a world devolved into chaos turns out to be a fair distraction from it. 

The sudden random death of billions of people across the planet has immediate and dire consequences. There are parts of the world where the entire population has more or less been wiped out. Crops die in suddenly abandoned fields, and scientists warn of coming famines. There are shortages of doctors and first responders nearly everywhere, resulting in massive spikes in violent crimes along with a slew of deaths and injuries and suicides. Looters blow through stores and houses and gangs take over neighborhoods and entire towns. There’s a mad scramble to locate children and other vulnerable persons left behind and attempt to reunite them with family or caregivers before they disappear into the many dark cracks the chaos has created.

Tony is a little bit in awe of Pepper, who during his months long absence has used all her enormous capacity for leadership and adaptation to redirect Stark Industries’ resources towards reconstruction and rescue efforts. She’s half-joked with him before about what would have happened if Tony had decided to use his powers for evil instead of playing superhero, but he wonders the same thing about her now. She’s already created half a dozen new departments and reorganized the remaining staff and set up a variety of charitable foundations by the time Tony returns to the main New York facility and she hands him a tablet full of documents outlining the most pressing issues needing attention.

Tony throws himself into all of it. These are problems that can be surmounted with time and effort and massive amounts of ingenuity and money, and he is ready and eager to provide all of that. He has failed the world as Iron Man but he can still help as Tony Stark. It will never be enough to atone for his mistakes, but he hopes it will at least alleviate some small part of the suffering his failure has caused.

The effort has other, more selfish benefits, as well. He has always been able to focus on a task with the kind of intense concentration that blocks out all other distractions. Hours spent reestablishing communications and creating and deploying a new facial recognition and surveillance program to identify and locate missing minors are hours that cannot be spent feeling the crushing weight of grief and failure. Hours spent flying back and forth to various meetings in various countries with various panicked, floundering government officials mean that he can drop into bed at night too exhausted to dream of the red earth of Titan and the unbearable hopelessness he had felt as the kid died in his arms.

There are still moments, though, where some reminder of Peter will suddenly appear, catching him off guard like a sucker punch to the gut. One night he is lying on the sofa in his living room nursing a headache after an hours long conference call with the fractured remains of the UN when he finds a crumpled paper tucked deep into the space between the couch cushions. He pulls it out and smooths it open, and his breath catches when he realizes that it’s a page of Peter’s physics homework, dated to about a month before…before everything. He can remember Peter turning the place upside down searching for it the night before it was due while Tony and Pepper helped, until Peter had finally had to go home empty handed. Peter had been so dejected and wound up over it that Tony had made him leave his workbook behind, and after Happy had taken the kid home Tony had redone the homework himself while Pepper gently teased him, a knowing smile on her face.

Another time he finds one of Peter’s sweaters tucked among his own clothes in a drawer at the back of his closet, mistakenly put there ages ago before the housekeepers had gotten used to the fact that a teenager hung around regularly enough that his clothes sometimes ended up left around the place or tossed into the laundry with Tony and Pepper’s things. Pepper will find him an hour or so later, sitting on the bed with the sweater clutched in his hands, choked with grief. She’ll sit next to him and run her fingers through his hair and say nothing, because there aren’t any words in any language with the power to reach an ache this deep.

There’s other things, too, little scraps of paper he’ll find in the lab with notes written in Peter’s scrawled handwriting. A sticky note with a doodle of a snoring Happy on it stuck to the mini fridge. Completely benign, mundane things like a threadbare knit glove found under the guest bed have the power to cripple him for the remainder of the day. He obsessively collects all of it, puts every little piece of Peter he finds into a safe alongside his mother’s pearls and his father’s cuff links. He’s visited May Parker a few times since he returned and he knows she’s doing the same, turning the kid’s bedroom into a kind of shrine. They exchange items every now and again, private collectors of the memorabilia of their shared grief. 

(“I’m sorry,” he had told her, when he had finally dredged up the courage to face her. And again and again, every time he visits her. _I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,_ until the words lose any sense of meaning. He had expected anger from her, had _wanted_ it. Instead, she had held his head in her hands and embraced him, and he had felt so, so utterly disgusted with himself for daring to let this woman comfort him when he had stolen everything from her.)

But the hardest hit comes six months after his return while he’s aboard a private jet on his way to meet with the queen mother of Wakanda and her daughter, the current de-facto ruler of one of the few countries in a post-Thanos world with enough wealth and bureaucracy and resources left intact to help rebuild the shambles everywhere else. The girl is around Peter’s age, and Tony thinks of the small walking disaster the kid had been and wonders how this child-queen could possibly handle the massive responsibility before her, but Rhodey and Bruce assure him that the girl is more than capable.

“She makes us look like the washed-up old dinosaurs we are,” Bruce says when they’re somewhere above Algeria. His smile is a tired, hesitant quirk of his mouth. “Gives me a lot of hope.”

“Yeah, you’ll love her,” Rhodey adds, his own grin wide and full of delight.

Tony doesn’t say anything. He’s wound so tightly on stress and coffee that he feels like he’s going to vibrate apart at the seams if he loses the tiniest bit of focus, because it’s not just a girl-genius and her mother and various other tribal leaders he will be meeting with. Steve Rogers is in Wakanda, helping to clean up the aftermath of the invasion there and the turmoil caused by the loss of T’Challa and countless others. They’ve spoken a few times over the phone once communications had been restored, their conversations awkward and full of unspoken regrets, but they have yet to meet again face-to-face.

And Cap…Tony had never heard him sound so tired, so defeated. It had shaken him. He was a broken man, returned to a broken planet full of other broken men. There were no heroes left here.

Steve had told him about Barnes on one of their calls, almost hesitantly, like he was afraid to hear what Tony had to say about it. And it’s true that at one time Tony might have felt a sick satisfaction with knowing Barnes was gone, but now he just feels numb to it. It was never about Barnes, anyway, not really. It was always about Steve—stubborn, loyal Steve who chose to chase the ghosts of his past rather than join Tony in facing the future. And Tony…Tony is every bit the stubborn idiot, as well. He could admit that now.

The truth is, as stupid and insignificant as the Accords and Siberia seem now in this terrible hell-scape of a present, the thought of seeing Steve in the flesh again after everything that’s happened between them still dredges up feelings of anger and hurt. But worse than that is the guilt—the gnawing, all-consuming belief that if Tony had only done more, or done things differently, that if he’d somehow been able to convince Steve to stay and face the threat as a team, that none of this would have happened. Titan would have never happened. Peter would be here now, hovering over Tony’s shoulder while he worked on something in the lab, asking a thousand rapid-fire questions while Tony pretends to be annoyed. Tony’s not sure he’s ready to look his failure in the face yet.

He can feel that coil of anxious tension tightening in his gut and he reaches into his jacket pocket to fish out his phone to call Pepper before he spirals any further. As he does, his fingers brush against something flat and hard in the bottom of his pocket. He pulls it out along with his phone and freezes when he sees what it is—an enameled keychain in garishly bright colors designed to look like Spider-Man’s mask, the eyes and head cartoonishly round and exaggerated.

Tony had been wearing this same suit jacket when he’d bought the keychain. Peter had been a top finalist in one of the more prestigious STEM competitions for high schoolers and had been awarded a substantial monetary prize, which he had dutifully dumped into his college fund, at May’s insistence. Tony had nearly fucking burst with pride when the kid had told him the news—as if he had anything at all to do with the kid’s ample smarts—and had taken him out for lunch to celebrate. It had naturally felt like a good time to discuss college with him, which for Tony meant bullying Peter into applying to MIT while Peter sulked and resisted and fretted endlessly as he was wont to do whenever the subject came up.

“What about Spider-Man?” Peter had argued as Tony walked him back to his apartment building.

“What about Spider-Man?” Tony had said, exasperated. “You can’t swing around and stop bicycle thieves in Boston for a few years? Or better yet—take a few years off and focus on your studies? I’d enjoy the reprieve from worrying about you getting yourself killed, too. Might be able to hold off on my hair going completely gray for awhile longer.”

“May is here,” Peter had said stubbornly.

“I’ll fly you back home on a private jet every weekend if you want,” Tony had plead. “Fuck, kid, I’ll buy her a five bedroom house in Cambridge right next to campus.”

“You’re here,” the cheeky little shit had tried, which would have tugged right the fuck on Tony’s heartstrings had Tony not been so dead set on the kid going to MIT for almost two years now.

“I’ll buy a house in Cambridge,” Tony had offered, as if he didn’t already have property in the area. The kid didn’t know that, though, and it had tripped him up. 

“Really?” he’d asked, sounding so surprised and touched by it that Tony hadn’t been able to look him in the face in case the kid saw just how much this mattered to him. Tony had set up a hundred walls meant to keep their admittedly amorphous relationship strictly professional, but Peter had managed to bulldoze through every one. Not that Tony would ever admit to that, because he’s certain that acknowledging it would be inviting disaster and he’s determined to avoid damning one of the few truly good things he has in his life.

“I’ll buy every house within a mile of campus if it gets your scrawny ass out of Queens and into MIT where it belongs,” Tony had replied with feigned flippancy. “And before you get all gooey-eyed, my motivations are entirely selfish. I consider this a long term investment. One day you’ll graduate and I’ll hire that big brain full of knowledge and exploit it for enormous personal profit.”

“Or maybe I’ll go work for Oscorp,” Peter had said, grinning ear-to-ear because he really is a little shit.

“Now hold on a damn second,” Tony had started, but the kid had interrupted him.

“Oh my god,” Peter had said suddenly as he came to an abrupt stop in front of a tiny souvenir shop selling t-shirts and other miscellaneous garbage. His eyes had grown huge and round as he pointed at the Spider-Man keychains hanging on a rack displayed prominently in the store’s window.

“Well, would you look at that,” Tony had said in a low voice, grinning as he slapped Peter on the back. “Your own merchandise. You’ve really made it now, kid.”

Tony had gone inside and bought four—one for himself, one for Peter, one for May, and one for Happy, who would roll his eyes but secretly be pleased. The kid had held his up, looking at it slightly stunned, like he couldn’t quite believe it was real.

“Mr. Stark,” he had said gravely after a moment. “This is a sign. Spider-Man is supposed to stay here.”

“No,” Tony had said, shaking his head adamantly. “Absolutely not. It’s an overpriced keychain being sold next to tourist crap. It is not a sign of anything, except that tourists are easy to rip off.”

“It is,” Peter had insisted. “You can’t change my mind now.”

And Tony had rolled his eyes and let out an exaggerated sigh and decided to let it go for the moment, because back then he had felt like he still had time to convince Peter to change his mind, all the time in the world, and Peter’s future had been blindingly bright regardless of where he decided to go to school. 

Tony had slipped his keychain into his pocket, not having any keys on his person to attach it to at the time, and then he had gotten busy with this or that or the other thing and had forgotten about it.

He holds it in his palm now, thousands of miles away from Queens, feeling the slight weight of it, cheap and insignificant, and for some reason he can’t breathe anymore and his vision has gone blurry.

“Tony, you alright?” Bruce is asking, and then maybe because of the stress of the trip or because he’s away from Pepper’s grounding influence, but something breaks apart in Tony. For a moment he is back on Titan watching the kid die all over again, feeling him crumbling apart in his arms. This boy that, god help him, he cares about so much and yet so foolishly always kept at arm’s length because the only thing that scared him more than someone else harming Peter was causing that hurt himself. He’s holding him tight and silently begging for all of this to not be real, to just be some terrible dream, to just please spare the kid and he’ll never, _never_ take another moment with him for granted and he’ll tell him every damn day how cherished he is. Begging and knowing in his heart that there is _nothing_ he can do to save him. 

And then he is back in a jet flying to Wakanda and it’s like a dam has burst open, like all the agony he’s been holding back so tightly for nearly a whole year is flooding over the banks completely out of control. He is weeping for the first time since his world had shattered, really truly weeping in a way he hasn’t since the day he found out his mother had died, his entire body shaking with great heaving sobs.

“I got you, Tony. I got you.” He can feel Rhodey’s arms around him squeezing him tight and Tony clings to him, wondering if he’ll ever be able to forget the taste of ash and blood in his mouth or the very specific sense of helpless terror that only comes with watching a child you love die. 

*  
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Rhodey is right—Tony does like Wakanda’s girl ruler. She reminds him a bit of Peter: another bright-eyed, precocious wunderkind, intensely curious and a little naive, though she possesses a self-confidence and poise that Peter never had. She’s brilliant, completely, wonderfully brilliant, and when she shows him some of the projects she’s developing in her lab he feels a spark of excitement that he hasn’t felt in ages, that he wasn’t sure he was even capable of feeling anymore.

“What do you think?” Shuri asks him after the tour, though the smug smile she’s giving him suggests she already knows what he’ll say.

“I think I should pack up Stark Industries now and beg you for a job here,” he says, smiling back at her. “Your toys look a lot shinier than mine.”

“You would never need to beg, Mr. Stark,” she says, and he can tell by her expression that she is genuinely flattered by his response. “I can only imagine what wonders you would create with all of Wakanda’s resources right at your fingertips.”

Tony opens his hands wide, shrugging. “Honestly, I’m more of a semi-retired politician these days, as much as that disgusts me to say.” He smiles, but there is something tight and heavy in his chest and he can’t quite meet her eyes. He doesn’t want to think about how all his technical and engineering genius had ultimately been worthless. His life’s work, a trivial pursuit cut down on Titan.

“There are some who wish to close our borders again and focus our efforts on rebuilding our own country,” she tells him later, after a difficult meeting with the tribal leaders. “But I intend to honor my brother’s vision for Wakanda. We will not sit behind our walls and turn a blind eye to the suffering of our neighbors. We will heal all together or not at all.”

“Thank you,” Tony says, truly grateful.

She turns and looks at him. “I hope you find healing, as well, Mr. Stark,” she says with the optimism of a young girl but the weight of someone far older. “You have earned it.”

He just nods woodenly at that, because as brilliant as Shuri is she’s absolutely wrong about this. He deserves all the suffering he’s experienced because it’s his fault everything failed so spectacularly.

_Your brother is dead because of me,_ he wants to say. He shakes her hand instead and departs to find Bruce and Rhodey.

*  
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He finds Steve Rogers instead. 

He’s standing on the shaded veranda of the guest house where Tony has been staying on the outskirts of the city, his hands tucked into his belt as he gazes out towards the snow-capped mountains in the distance. His hair is long and shaggy and he’s grown a thick beard, a far cry from the clean-cut soldier Tony remembers, but the stance is unbearably familiar.

Tony’s steps falter and slow, startled by the man’s sudden appearance before him like an apparition or a mirage. Somewhere in the distance a bird warbles a low trilling call and insects drone noisily in the fruit trees decorating the garden in front of the house, but Tony hears none of it. His heart is beating too loudly, pounding against his sternum like a fist trying to splinter through the bone.

Steve turns his head as Tony approaches, his face half hidden by shadow. They stand and silently observe each other for a long moment. A million thoughts burst and scatter across Tony’s mind, fizzling before he can quite grasp any individual one and sort it out of the chaotic static.

“Hey, Tony,” Steve says at last. Just like that, like the last time they saw each other they hadn’t been beating the shit out of each other, like Steve hadn’t left him bruised and bloodied and heartbroken in a bunker in Siberia. Like the world hadn’t ended and half the people they cared about hadn’t died.

“Cap,” Tony says, hating how rough his voice sounds. But he’s exhausted and sick with grief and tired of hiding the pain and regret. He wants to end it now, but he’s not sure how.

“How you holding up?” Steve asks, and if it was anyone else Tony would have thought he was being mocked, but there is sincere concern in Steve’s question.

Tony releases a slow breath. “Well, I’m here and I’m more or less in one piece, so I guess things could be worse. You?” 

Steve makes a motion with his head and shoulder, a kind of half-hearted shrug, like there isn’t a word to describe what he’s feeling. “We’ve been keeping busy. So have you, it sounds like.”

“Yeah, there’s…a lot to do still,” Tony says lamely. He clears his throat, studying a spot just above Steve’s head. “Bruce told me, uh, you had a funeral here. For Sam and Wanda and Vision. And—” he clears his throat again, forces himself to meet Steve’s eye—“And Barnes. I’m sorry I wasn’t there.”

The grief is visible then on Steve’s face, like a curtain has been thrown back to reveal what lies behind. “I’m sorry, too. I thought you’d be coming back, just as soon as you could, but it didn’t feel right to wait any longer. There was so much to do, so much to rebuild, and...We needed the closure first. It was hard enough not knowing where you were.”

“I understand,” Tony says thickly. “We can—we can maybe have another memorial, with everyone. Back home,” he adds. A tentative hope, not quite an olive branch but a step in the right direction, he thinks.

“I’m not even sure where home is anymore,” Steve says, almost to himself, and he sounds so lost that it scares Tony, because Steve has always been the one with the plan, always been so steadfast and resolute. The one you could lean on when everything else was falling apart.

“You know, I never thought I’d be the kind of guy who gets to retire,” Steve continues quietly, looking back out towards the mountains. “Always seemed impossible. Scary, even. But then I found Bucky again...and when I brought him here, for the first time ever I really felt like we’d finally found some place safe. I thought...maybe we could make a go of it here, some day, I mean, when everything got shaken out and settled for good. It wouldn’t be like home, but that would be alright. Brooklyn doesn’t even feel like home anymore. Too much has changed. _We’ve_ changed. But we’d have each other, and we would have peace. We could have a fresh start, make whatever we want of it.” 

He’s quiet for a time, his gaze distant. “Suppose I should have known better. I’m not sure there’s anywhere peaceful for people like us. Me and Buck.” He looks at Tony sadly. “And you. Seems like the fighting follows us wherever we go. It was just...just a dream. And now...it’s done for us, I guess. We failed and we have to live with that.”

The pain of that statement is stifling. It’s like being stabbed again, the same piercing agony that steals the breath away.

“I should have been here,” Tony says hoarsely. “I should have…I couldn’t even call you, I couldn’t…how fucked up is that? I knew what was coming, I knew for six years and Bruce warned me and I still…”

He stops because he can hear himself babbling and the crush of guilt is too much. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “ _Fuck,_ I’m so sorry. Barnes is dead because of me. Sam and Wanda and Vision and…” Peter, sweet, good-hearted Peter who just wanted to help, who should have been on a field trip and filling out college admissions forms and not dying on some barren planet billions of miles away from home.

“I’m sorry, too,” Steve says, earnestly. “Tony, I’m sorry, too. For everything. For...for what happened in Siberia, for lying about your parents. For not being there.”

“It doesn’t...it doesn’t even matter, anymore,” Tony says, breathing hard. “You don’t—you weren’t there. On Titan. Nothing else matters. If you knew what happened...”

Steve takes a few steps closer. His hand on Tony’s shoulder is hesitant at first, then firmer when Tony doesn’t pull away.

“What happened on Titan?” Steve asks, so, so gently, without any judgement, and maybe that’s why Tony tells him everything.

“I got everyone killed,” Tony says breathlessly. “That’s what happened. I got everyone killed. That—that _idiot_ asshole wizard…he gave up the stone to save my life. Traded it for me. Because I wasn’t good enough. I couldn’t stop Thanos. I spent _six years_ preparing for him, and it wasn’t enough. I could have—I should have been better. Everyone’s dead because I’m an arrogant piece of shit who thought he could do it alone. Your dream is dead because of me.” Tony gives a bark of humorless laughter. “I killed my dream, too, if it’s any consolation.” 

He laughs again but it comes out more like a sob this time. He shakes his head, gasping for air that is suddenly too thin and clutching at his chest.

“Tony,” Steve murmurs, his hand squeezing Tony’s shoulder. There’s nothing but kindness and sorrow in his eyes and Tony wants to hate him for being so compassionate, for not being angry and vindictive like Tony deserves, but he can’t, he can’t because he needs that compassion so very badly right now.

“There was a kid with me,” Tony whispers brokenly. It feels somehow like an act of atonement, confessing his sins to Steve Rogers. They’d been through so much together, knew the darkest parts of each other. It was fitting. “Peter. I brought him with me to Germany.”

“The kid from Queens,” Steve says, still so gentle. A ghost of a smile briefly crinkles the corners of his eyes. “I remember. Scrappy little punk. Almost kicked my head clean off.”

Tony nods jerkily. “I dragged him into all our garbage because I was a desperate idiot without a fucking clue. He was—Jesus, he was just a baby, and I was the biggest idiot in the world. And then afterward I got more involved…I shoulda left him the fuck alone, Pepper and Rhodey warned me, but I didn’t listen, because—because I wanted to prove something to myself, or—or— _fuck,_ I don’t know, but I couldn’t let him go, couldn’t stay away. I’m a selfish prick and I couldn’t...He didn’t deserve all my bullshit. He was just this little kid, and he was so, _so_ good and—god, I—he’s gone now, and it’s my fault. I didn’t do enough to stop it…” Tony falters, breathing hard and pressing a trembling hand against his eyes, feeling the sting of tears. 

“I was...I was holding him,” he says quietly, his voice shaking with the horror of it. He’s never told anyone this part. Not Pepper or Rhodey or the well-meaning grief counselor he has reluctantly agreed to see somewhat regularly. Not even May. Especially not May. “He knew it was coming and he was...he was so scared. I held him, and he just—he just—god, I could feel it, I could feel him coming apart, and he apologized to me, I got him killed and he fucking _apologized,_ and I can’t—how am I supposed to live with that, how—”

He sways, dizzy with grief, and before he can react he’s being crushed against Steve’s chest, his head pressed against Steve’s broad shoulder. Tony leans into him, into this man he has loved and hated in near equal measure almost all his life. His arms come up of their own volition, his fingers grasping Steve’s shirt and twisting fistfuls of it.

“I just wanted to keep him safe,” Tony breathes out against Steve’s shoulder. “I fucked up so many times with him, but I wanted...I loved that kid, I love him so goddamn much, and he’s dead because of me.”

Steve says nothing, just holds him tighter. He doesn’t make any denials or pass any blame, doesn’t talk about forgiveness or healing or offer any of the other meaningless platitudes or useless condolences everyone else has shoved at Tony these past months, and for that Tony is so incredibly grateful to him. For saying nothing and just accepting it, his guilt and his pain, for what it is. Because Steve feels the same guilt and pain, Tony knows. He can see it in the man’s eyes, that haunted, hollow look they share. The weight of trillions of lost lives bearing down on their shoulders.

_You were spared._

_For what?_

“This can’t be it. This can’t—it can’t end this way,” Tony says after a time, releasing his tight hold on the man so he can look Steve in the face. “We have to…What do we do now?” _How do we fix this,_ he means, but he knows he doesn’t have to say it aloud for Steve to understand.

“What we’re supposed to do,” Steve says, with that familiar unyielding determination. But there is a hard edge to his words and to his face that Tony has never seen before, something dangerous and fatalistic. “But we do it together this time.”

*  
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*  
*

He spends Christmas Eve with May again, just the two of them in her apartment as they’ve done for the past couple of years. They eat brownies with slightly burned bottoms straight out of the pan and watch cheesy holiday movies while sharing the bottle of champagne Tony brought. People have started to put out more decorations this year, Tony notices, more lights and cheery music, and he marvels a little at how quickly the world seems able to shift into a new normal. He’s not sure yet if he’ll ever be able to join it.

Later, they lie hip to hip on the narrow bottom bunk bed in Peter’s room. There are pictures and other things tacked to the bottom of the top bunk right over where their heads rest on the pillow—photos of Peter with his friends, a picture of May and Ben hugging and smiling at the camera, their faces bright and happy, oblivious to the cascade of tragedy that lies ahead. A cartoonish drawing of a pensive, Bambi-eyed Peter, the words “LOSER IN CRISIS” etched in block letters across the top. Another doodle of Happy, this one angry and buffoonish. A list of Spanish vocabulary words with a warning—“Fail and kiss your GPA goodbye, Parker!!!!"—written with sharpie in Peter’s messy handwriting. Tony has seen it all so many times now that he can close his eyes and picture every detail perfectly.

“I’m scared I’m going to come in here one day and lie on this bed,” May says, “and it won’t smell like him anymore. Like, I have thousands of pictures of him, I’m never gonna forget what he looks like, and I have all these videos and voicemails I’ve saved so I can always hear his voice. I have some of his baby teeth in a jar somewhere, for crying out loud, but I’m so scared I’m gonna forget what he smelled like. Is that weird?”

“No,” Tony says, folding an arm behind his head. “No, I worry about it, too.” He thinks about the clothes and pillowcases he keeps closed up in special boxes for that very reason, about all those little rituals and behaviors that look completely insane to outsiders but are perfectly rational to the bereaved. He wonders if there is anything in human behavior as intimate as the act of grieving for a loved one.

May gives a little laugh. “God, I never thought I’d worry about forgetting what a gross teenage boy smells like. I was always nagging him to change his sheets and now I’m glad he was lazy. It happened with Ben, too. There are all those little things about a person that can drive you up a wall when they’re around, but once they’re gone you miss even the most obnoxious things.”

“Yeah,” Tony says, a smile tugging at his lips. “You know what I miss? He had all those old hoodies he’d wear all the time, and when he was upset or worried about something he’d chew on the strings, just gnaw them down into these wet, frayed, raggedy ends.”

“Oh my god, yes,” May groans. “So gross! He did it to every hoodie and jacket he owned.”

“Absolutely disgusting,” Tony agrees. “Drove me crazy. I used to cut the strings off the hoodies he’d leave at my place and he’d get so pissed. Say I was denying him his coping method and he’d have to turn to hard drugs to deal with his anxiety and it would be my fault his future was ruined, the little asshole. Now I think about it fondly, which is frankly horrifying.”

May laughs again, covering her face with her hands, and Tony knows she’s crying. He might be, as well, but it doesn’t matter when it’s just the two of them.

They’re quiet for a moment, just breathing together and listening to the distant sounds of the city outside, still so much more muted than before.

“Do you think it ever goes away?” Tony asks quietly. “The...the hurt.”

May turns onto her side to face him, her hand finding his. “I don’t think so. You just...learn to live with it.”

He takes a deep breath. “I don’t...I don’t want that.”

“What do you want, then?”

_To fix this. To make it right._

“I’m not sure,” he says slowly. “I’m still trying to figure that out.”

He takes another deep breath. “We’ve set a date,” he says suddenly. “For the wedding. Finally.”

“Oh, Tony, I’m glad,” May says, squeezing his hand. “I’m so glad.”

“Yeah,” he says, a little breathlessly. It still doesn’t feel quite real, sometimes. “Yeah. April 3rd, so put it on your calendar. Pepper wanted a late summer wedding, but we feel like we can’t put it off any longer. You just—you never know what could happen.” 

He doesn’t tell her about the messages he and Steve have been exchanging with Nebula as she sniffs her father out like a hellbent cyborg bloodhound in the far reaches of the universe. She has help now—Rocket has joined her along with a fleet of space-pirates-turned-Titan-hunters, and Thor searches with his own rag-tag crew of alien refugees. The leads have gotten better in the past few months. It’s starting to feel like it might not just be a wild goose chase. But he says nothing because he doesn’t want her to worry—or worse, to hope. Not yet. He’s hurt her enough already, and she isn’t Pepper—she never agreed to be a part of any of this. And it may all come to nothing, anyway, a fruitless quest.

“It’s going to be alright,” May says firmly, like she can sense what he’s holding back.

“Yeah,” he says, wanting her to be right. Wanting to make it right for her, for everyone. For Steve and Bucky. For Wanda and Vision and Sam and Clint. For Quill and his friends, for Nebula and her sister Gamora. For bright-eyed Peter Parker. “Yeah, it is.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that's it for this one folks. Thanks everyone for reading/commenting/leaving kudos! Y'all are such little darlings *blows cloud of kisses*


End file.
